Thursday, October 7th, 2010
No. Not that season. And to be honest, I dread the beginning of that season which I swear now starts as early as July in some stores.
No…it’s THAT season. The season of change.
Living in New England makes us privvy to weather changes. We go from Winter to Spring/Summer (I swear spring is 2 days long now), Summer to Fall/Summer (Indian summer anyone?) and finally Fall to Winter again. Each time this occurs, there seems to be an overall “feeling” that comes with each season.
Winter brings commitment. We tend to hunker down and disappear during this time. We’re hoping to find the energy and resolve we need to do the offseason justice.
Spring brings renewal. We become engergized and want to either clean out our house or go for a hike. Depends on the day.
Summer brings carefree fun. Who cares about work or that house we just cleaned. All we’re thinking is ‘bring on the deck with the drinks’.
Fall brings a distinct feeling of change. You’re not quite sure of what you want, you just know it’s about change. I have spoken about this before when I touched upon being put back into a “diet box” and so on. Suddenly, we feel the need for structure, sweaters (even if it is warm out) and different food/exercise combinations. It’s wild. Everyone I talk to right now needs a change and it is because of fall.
Here are 2 things you need to be aware of to weather the change of fall:
Nutrition:
Lose the green veggies as a staple. I know I love them and push them on folks like a winter coat in a storm, but you need to break out the winter squashes again. Now is the time for a good soup like a butternut squash soup or a protein source like bison, liver or sardines to come out again. (I do want you to know I slid the sardines in there and have laughed my head off because of it.) Fish varieties should be changing if you buy your fish from a fish market and not a supermarket. Warm foods like oat bran and quinoa come back to life now. You may have been rocking quinoa cold in a salad before but now it’s time to heat it back up.
Suddenly, there is this sense of needing to be cozy. Quiet. Contemplative. With that our food should soon follow with healthy casseroles becoming more appealing, crock pots coming back to the counter and salads disappearing overnight. We need to keep up with the change of the season by rotating the same old staples that we have in the diet. Look for chili recipes and stratas–make it lively because it is easy to fall into the winter blues before it’s even winter.
Workouts:
“Non-Metered to metered”. What in Heaven’s name do I mean by metered? Summer time sends folks outside. Unless you just sit on your porch and fan yourself and then try to call it cardio, you are most likely working pretty hard. Outside workouts are bodyweight centered workouts. You must move your whole body and it’s not dependent on a piece of equipement to do it. You hike, bike, walk, run, skip, shuffle and so on. There’s direction change, scaling things such as rocks and park fixtures, level changes (ground to standing), sprinting, etc. There seems to be an endless amount of activity that we can do outside without having to kill ourselves creatively to do it. Then we come inside. Oh boy. Now we’re bored out of our minds. I would rather remove a limb with a butter knife than get on the elliptical which is where the problems begin: we’re going to forget to step up the indoor activity to match the intensity of the outdoor activity. We now have to meter our workouts by tracking time/intensity/mode etc. Do not think that just “punching” the clock of that workout is going to do the trick. Stay on it! This is how the holidays come up on us and we’re up 10 pounds without even realizing it.
Let’s avoid this catastrophe by 1) ensure variety within our workouts. Do not get on the same piece of equipment everyday even if it is your bike trainer! Vary it up. 2) Be conscious while working out. I really mean that. If you finish your workout and you don’t even remember beginning it–there’s a problem! KNOW what you’re doing right now. And 3) Try to get outdoors every once in a while even if it is monsoon wind season like it is now. Take one for the team and get either wet or cold. Who cares which–just get outside.
I have grown to love fall. I am a true summer girl, myself. I come alive in the summer and shrink back into my cave in the fall. I do enjoy a beautiful Indian summer but hate the fact that the sun goes down so early. I have thought about moving, every year about this time to be exact, but then I am reminded about bugs, hurricanes, tornadoes, mud slides and earthquakes whenever I bring up a great “warm all the time” location. I think I’ll stay right here and just learn to deal with the change.
It’s time to get ready for the offseason. I know a few of you still have events on the horizon, but for the most of us it is time to plan for the spring. Keep reading because we have lots of stuff coming along to help you get there.
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
Are you wasting your time doing a four day split while trying to get ready for an event? Are you shoving things in on days that you are dead or missing whole days b/c you ‘got nothin’? Only to find that it’s not doing anything for your body composition any more?
One of the tools we love to rock at MP4 are complexes. They are fast, effective and all encompassing. You can substitute a day of cardio for them, aw well. Try them and let us know if you like them.
What are they?
They are a barbell workout designed around 4 to 8 exercises that are set up in a way so that they create a flow of movement around the barbell. All exercises are big muscle movers and major windsuckers so you are fully out of breath by the time you finish.
Isn’t that a circuit?
Umm…no. Any time you say the word circuit I cringe. Honestly, I have visions of women in regular clothing moving from machine to machine sans sweat who are there solely to pass time in between rounds of bingo next door at the church hall. Once the outer square and overall are done, they’ll go back in for round 2.
What’s the catch?
The catch is, you cannot put the barbell down once you start. So you do each exercise separately and complete all reps before moving on to the next exercise. This is killer! You must choose a weight that is challenging to the weakest movement and then go for it.
I’m Confused…
Ok…here’s a great complex: Overhead press, overhead squat, back squat, front squat, bent over row and Romanian deadlift. Perform that with a barbell and do 7 reps of each exercise. Once you start with the OH press, DO NOT PUT THE BB DOWN until you have gone through each exercise at least once. Do this for 4 sets of 7 reps each. Rest 120s between each set. Remember to bring a puke sack with you, you’ll need it right about the time you hit the 3rd set and you’re doing the back squat. OY!
This is cardio?
Heck yeah! Again…try it before you question. It’s also a great way to maintain muscle without having to kill yourself. AND…IT’S FAST!!!!!!!!
Please try this out and let me know how you do on it. I love complexes and I know you will, too!
Thursday, September 16th, 2010
I swear everything we did when we were kids was so much better than now that we are adults.
Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life. — Herbert Henry Asquith
But we didn’t know what we had when we had it. We wanted to grow up over night and live like we were 20 something when we were only 13. We knew it all. We had it all. And the best of all: we weren’t responsible for a thing. No, that was left to our parents. That was their job to worry over the bills, make sure we were safe, drive us to Palace on Route 1 at 10 o’clock at night b/c we had a cute outfit (er…or was that just me?). Our parents were saviors and menaces all at the same time. Take me where I need to go but don’t ask me where I’m going! What’s wrong with that picture? Haha
I am in a state of reflecting (and flux, tbh) right now because the rock of my life, that I did not seem to give such credit to, had a very traumatic thing happen to him last week. My dad, the smartest man I have ever met besides his brother Bruce, went in for a routine medical procedure that for the average person would have been an hour to two hour procedure with a bit of monitoring to follow to make sure he was ok. Instead my dad, while sitting up and fully aware, proceeded to have a stroke and a heart attack all at the same time on the table. Yes, he is alive. Yes, he is out of the woods. No, he’s not the same and never will be again—and it is so hard for me to type that.
I know I have said this before and I truly do mean it: there are worse things than dying. Living less than who you are or who you know yourself to be is sheer hell in and of itself. Value the gift of movement because it is fleeting at best. At any time life can take something as precious as that from you and you cannot do anything about it. Obviously this is why we work out the way we do and why we care about how we look and function. My dad is in there somewhere and he cannot get out. How frustrating must that be? More importantly, this was all preventable if he lived in a different generation. Health was not important when he was in his prime and it definitely was not when he passed it. All we can do is sit back and watch our parents choose to live in ways that make US now sit on the edge OUR seat waiting for THEM to come home.
I do miss the old days.
“Sometimes when a man recalls the good old days, he’s really thinking of his bad young days.” Anon
Not because it was better in terms of my life or circumstances (I am so truly blessed with some of the best people I could ever ask for in my life—please refer to the MP4 team), but because exercise was fun and not something I had to do to stay in shape. I know someone is going to say I love to exercise and I am going to tell you to go fly a kite. And honestly, even if you do, you do not love it now like you did when you were a kid. Now exercise is a fad: crossfit, p90x, parkour and so on. Back then…it was life; it was fun.
Running
Is what you did because you could. Whether you ran to your girlfriend’s house two streets over in your jelly shoes or you ran to the park to make sure everyone was there in your tight Jordache jeans, running was purely acceptable. No one wore heart rate monitors. No one bought books on running. Very few kids back then were heavy. We ran everywhere. Spontaneously. In any clothing. In any footwear. And we’re still around to talk about it.
Parkour (FreeRunning)
In the old days, Free Running is what you did when you were about to miss the school bus. See, the school bus did not pick you up in front of your house like it does now. You actually had to *walk* to the school bus. But let’s face it, you were never on time. So you had to *run* like a lost African tribesman caught out in the Serengeti alone. Unarmed. In the dark. At any given moment you would see about 20 kids come flying off the side streets onto High St. doing a buck twenty five trying to catch the bus. At least once a week there was a casualty (Someone would miss it, someone would wipe out, someone would have a wardrobe malfunction. Scary stuff.) and we’d all talk about it for months and laugh. But then there were the champs. They were the ones that would jump over cars, climb trees, dive roll, fall, roll, get up and keep running. These folks meant business. Clearly if they missed homeroom one more time, stuff was going to go down. So they mastered the art of Parkour, got older, gave it a name and started a movement. We know the true origin, though.
Crossfit
This is another form of “way too much time on your hands in the summer down at the park”. This is when you would say to someone: “I dare you to climb the slide the wrong way, jump over all the animals in the park, do 10 pullups on the monkey bars, run around the block 2 times and then lift Tony up 5 times. You do that and I’ll buy you a steak cheese.” Next thing you know, everybody goes flying off and Tony finds himself being hoisted up by 4’ 8” girls wanting a steak and cheese. Shame. Cuz now you have to pay to do this kind of stuff. And an even bigger shame is that you can’t find a good old fashioned park anymore either with dangerous things like 15 foot slides and merry go rounds that could spin faster than the earth’s orbit. But now it’s all about the deadlift, kip up and pull up with no Tony to be found anywhere.
Relivio
Probably the best form of exercise there is in the country and there is nothing else like it. Group hide and seek. At least 30 kids in the neighborhood get together and form 2 teams. One team has 5 min to disperse across a 5 street area and hide. The goal is for everyone to get back to base. Inevitably there would always be one jackass who would forget who is on his team and who is not and be captured. Then there was at least one couple that disappeared never to be found that game again. Someone would get bitten by a dog and at least 2 people would end up forgetting what was base and what was not. But you always knew a game was going down because all you could see was a bunch of kids running through the neighborhood like a bunch of cockroaches after the light’s been turned on. It was awesome. Unfortunately nowadays if you see that, it is usually called a “citywide search” and it involves handcuffs and mug shots.
Multisport
Now known as triathlons and duathlons and most involve swimming, this actually got its origin from the street lights coming on. If you were unlucky enough to be too far away from your house when this happened you were required to run, bike, sky dive, crawl, hitch rides and so on to get your behind home FAST. Do not mistake this for running or Parkour. This condition brought on athletic feats that mankind still has not reproduced. You would see 4 kids on a huffy bike (one pedaling, one on the seat with you in the back, one on the handle bars and the last in the back on the spokes) moving at the speed of light—the street light that is or cutting through yards, hopping fences, swimming through neighborhood pools—you name it, it happened here. It always involved 2 to 3 modes of movement: running, biking, praying. And it was grueling to say the least. You really never knew you made it til you made it. No time keepers. No water stops. No bike transition areas. Every so often, though, one of the cool parents in the neighborhood would provide a friendly voucher for you (“honestly, Julie, Jodi was here helping me out. She’s on the way now.” Whew!) and bought you some time, but that was about it.
OH I MISS THESE DAYS! And I miss my dad. My heart aches in a way I cannot describe and I am not one to put emotion out on the table. He may or may not “come back”. Pray that he comes back.
In the mean time…I love you all. Along with my family, you complete my life. Do not ever forget how important that last time you may see someone is. God Bless.
Thursday, August 26th, 2010
It’s nearing the end of summer here in New England and I am already in my “mourning” mode thinking about the loss of sun, fun and freedom that summer provides. Our clients, on the other hand, are ecstatic. Let me explain…
We all love a challenge and the rush of excitement a new challenge brings with it. We also love the *end* of a challenge and look forward to a time of less constraints, more choice and the ability to do what we want when we want. That, of course, lasts for about 10 min.
If you decided to do a big event this summer, say an Iron Man, marathon or charity challenge, you most likely spent weeks getting ready for it. For some of these things you may have even invested as much as 15 to 20 hours per week training and couldn’t wait for the day of the event to come for two reasons: 1) to see how you do after all the effort you put into it and 2) to be done with it! What starts out as a welcomed challenge can soon become a huge albatross around our necks and we slowly need to see the dream come to fruition or go its merry way—whichever comes first for some. But what happens after the event is over or when school vacation starts or when your favorite bootcamp class takes a brief hiatus? (haha!) You lose your tree and yell at your coach. Well…some of you do (some of you are nice enough to talk in a sweet, loving way while stressing the need for more structure). The rest of everyone else aimlessly mills the streets looking for another “box” to hop into searching for some much needed security that a tight demanding schedule and the rigors of an unrelenting diet provide. As much we want it to be over, we love the security the “torture” gives us. Losing it is like losing a boyfriend you really weren’t into: you don’t want him but you don’t want anyone else to have him either.
You know, and your family and friends know, too, that you need a break. You are burnt around the edges and you no longer enjoy the training, the time constraints, the planning and so on. Getting up in the morning is a chore. Packing your meals is a chore. Or better, yet, it’s not so much that they are a chore as much as they have lost their excitement. You don’t dread it per se but you no longer look forward to doing it. You may be on autopilot. You may be cutting corners. You may be doing everything as diligently as you were in the beginning but you no longer smile about it. Regardless of what it is that you are experiencing, you want this to be over–then you get what you wished for and all heck breaks loose.
Nothing is uglier than an athlete without a goal. I would rather sever a limb off at the joint with a butter knife than be around a goal-oriented psycho who is without a goal. Talk about sheer mayhem and chaos. We work with some of the toughest clients around. Never miss a workout. Never complain. Work through injuries. Do two-a-days like it’s nothing. Plan their life down to a tee and never, ever whine…until they are goal-less. Suddenly, they are damsels in distress and need to be saved. Now hear me when I say this, this is spoken completely in the voice of love and I am not referring to one person in particular. All of us do this! I am not condemning or chastising anyone in particular nor am I calling any names here. This applies to everyone right now. Not only that, I am just stating a fact. This reminds me of myself: I will drop a 20 pound book on my foot, possibly break something serious and never even mention it to anyone. I could need hospitalization for it and I will never tell anyone; I will sit and make all my client calls from the ER, uninterrupted and on time. But let me get a paper cut or mosquito bite and you would think I was dying from the bubonic plague. Most of you ladies are the same. The bigger the challenge, the louder the battle cries, the better the results; anything less than that and we melt into a pot of sheer discombobulation that culminates into a sea of confusion.
Flash forward to now, the end of summer when many challenges have been met, we are at the tail end of the summer vacation (i.e. school vacation for us mommies is just about over) and the sweetness of the warm weather has worn off and I can show you some uptight, battle ready, angry, confused women who either need a lofty goal with iron clad structure or a good old fashioned beatdown (think bar room brawl here)—or both! They are tired of the freedom, tired of the interim schedule, burned out from the last goal but needing another for sanity purposes, lost, annoyed, antsy, feisty, combative and so on…I’m afraid to answer my phone right now! Haha Holy mother of pearl, let’s get some constraints going here!
So in the interest of empathy and love, here are some suggestions to you folks who are waiting to wear sweaters again to work:
1) Acknowledge where you are in this: Do you really need a goal again or do you need a rest from your last goal? It makes a difference. Picking the former when you really are the latter could mean the difference between you hating where you are or you only needing a few weeks to get over it.
2) Create some stability on your own: No matter what, keep up on your training. Bring it down to baseline if need be but have *something*. Stopping makes you feel like a wet noodle and it creates indifference. Not good.
3) Continue to plan your meals: Even if that means you are planning where you are eating out daily. Not thinking about your menu after having 3 months of meditating on your menu is a recipe for disaster. You may not want to pack anything right now, but you must have a plan for your time of discord. Create an easy breakfast, lunch, dinner type template that has some fun in it so you do not resent your current situation.
4) Pick a smaller, more doable goal: A 5 or 10k is a great goal to think about when you don’t want a huge goal to think about. It’s still fun and competitive, but it does not require you to give up your life to do it.
Once you have done all of this, put it into action! Do not hesitate! And make it REAL! I cannot stress that enough. Yes, us coaches at MP4 can help you out with a new goal and get you going, but if you are not presently working with us, this will help you out tremendously. Honor your inner voice with some good old fashioned stability but leave enough room for some wiggling. The summer is not over yet.
Thursday, August 12th, 2010
I know she looks sweet, but she's about to scale a bus!
Back in the day there used to be a saying that was used all the time: Puttin’ on the Ritz. It meant to dress very fashionably and there was even a movie about it, as well. We have since borrowed that saying and resurrected it for our MP4 athlete Jan Forde but we have added a bit of twist to it. See, we are prepping Jan for the 2010 Urbanathlon and she has never looked better:
“Jodi, all my friends want to know what I am doing when we all get together and train. Not only can I hang with them all athletically, but they love the way I look, too. They keep asking me, ‘Jan, who are you working with? What are you doing?’ I love it.”
Jan, like many of us, want to rock an event like we owned it and come out of it looking like we “meant to do that”. No one wants to say they rocked an event and be up 10 pounds because of it. So when we first spoke of her goal for the Urbanathlon, we had to map out a few things:
How much time can you truly dedicate to your prep? We’re the best at what we do, but we cannot work miracles. So before you begin to train for an event such as this, we need to know you have some time available. Excessive travel, crazy work schedules and endless weekend interruptions can truly hamper your ability to excel in both the event and your physique goals. We need to make sure you have time and you have thought this through to the end.
Have you ever jumped over a bus? Umm…in this case, that’s a valid question. We went over the course together and discussed the aggressive of her training and how hard she would be working. This is an advantage to the physique goal and honestly was a major draw for her.
Is there a wedding on the horizon? How about a bat mitzvah? Baby shower? Anniversary? Beuller? Basically, you are about to “be on” with your nutrition for a few months. What’s going to get in the way of your focus and can we come up with a game plan to keep you on track?
Once we mapped out the preliminary things that qualify us to be able to help her prep for the event, we then dug a little deeper:
What do you want to look like at the end of this prep? This is huge! No—she’s not huge—THIS is huge! We need to see eye to eye before we have you do one burpee or jump squat. If you think you’re going to lose enough weight to qualify for a discount on luggage at American Airlines and we think you can only lose a small farm animal off your backside, we have a problem. We must be speaking the same language before this starts. For Jan, it was all about body composition (you know, tighten the booty an’ all) which is definitely doable.
Who was your first boyfriend? Ok, we didn’t dig THAT deep but we did ask some questions that help us to get to know her better like Have you been dieting for a while? Have you ever done an event such as this? Do you have any medical problems we should know of? Which do you like better, mascara that lengthens or volumizes? (Joanna AND Seanna snuck that in, those rascals!)
Once we drew her blood, took her fingerprints and scanned her iris, we were ready to go!haha We set up her program so she has weight training to support her event, cardio that takes into account what she needs for her physique goal and what she needs for her event, a functional workout that mimics the movements she will need for the Urbanathlon, nutrition that allows for her to shape up and lose a bit but still have enough energy to recover from the workouts and gave her a few lectures on listening to her body so it’s as if we are with her all the time. She is pumped and in mid prep for an event that sounds like a psycho amount of fun. This weekend we will determine if she can sneak a half marathon in the month before or not. It would be a great accomplishment for her but we’ll have to look at it in light of her physique goal, work schedule and her ability to recover. I’m not sure it’ll happen but we’ll keep you posted.
“I really want to run the half marathon but I am good for overdoing it at times. I trust you ladies completely. You really know what you are doing.” Awwwe, thanks Jan. We love working with you, too!
If you want a tight booty like Jan or you want a psycho program that mimics the Urbanathlon or if you find yourself in the middle of prepping for your 10k and the scale is going the opposite direction than you expected, hit us up. We have some exciting programs coming your way for the fall alongside more information to help you get it done on your own. We appreciate all the of the feedback you have been giving to us and we encourage you to give us even more if you can. Hang tight, there is much more to come!
